THE BREAD LINE

THE BREAD LINE
10,000 B.C.: Man eats a crude form of unleavened bread made of baked flour and water.
3000 B.C.: Egyptians make the first leavened bread by introducing yeast into the dough. Workers who built the pyramids are paid in bread.
150 B.C.: Bakers guilds form in Rome. Bakers are considered so important, they are the only craftsmen who are not slaves.
100 B.C.: A freed Roman slave invents a mechanical dough mixer: a stone basin with wooden paddles, powered by a horse or donkey walking in circles.
1066: Hair sieves help sift the bran from flour, creating a finer white bread.
1266: England adopts laws regulating the price and weight of bread. If a baker breaks the rules, he can be pilloried and banned from baking for life.
1666: A baker is said to have started the Great Fire of London.
1762: The fourth Earl of Sandwich, John Montague, asked servants to bring him beef between two slices of bread. The sandwich is born.
1826: In England, whole meal bread, eaten by the military, is said to be healthier than the white bread eaten by the aristocracy.
1850s: The United States has 2,017 bakeries, employing more than 6,700 workers.
1895: Louis Lassen grinds excess beef and serves it between two slices of bread: The hamburger.
1910: Ward Baking Co. of Chicago opens the first automatic bread factory and advertises that the bread is untouched by human hands until it's placed in a wrapping machine.
1920: Seventy percent of Americans still bake their own bread.
1921: Wonder Bread debuts.
1926: Toastmaster, the first pop-up toaster for the home, goes on sale for $13.50.
1928: The commercial bread slicer is introduced.
1933: A loaf of bread costs a nickel, and 80 percent of bread sold in the United States is pre-sliced and wrapped. Americans love it so much, we got the expression "the best thing since sliced bread."
1939-45: Food is in such short supply in Britain because of blockades during World War II that bakers do not have to join the armed forces. They are told to bake as much bread as possible.
1943: The U.S. secretary of agriculture bans the sale of sliced bread to hold down prices during wartime rationing.
1992: The U.S. Dietary Guidelines food pyramid recommends Americans eat six to 11 servings of bread and other grains every day.
1992: Electric bread machines are introduced.
2005: A new food pyramid recommends that half of the grains you eat every day should be whole grain.
Sources: The Bakers Co., www.kidcyber.com, www.hungrymonster.com, www.bracesbakery.com, www.foodreference.com